A campaign choosing its game is really choosing a mood, a mechanic, and a moment — and the catalog exists because different campaigns need different ones. The ChaiRaiser games were built as a family: one engine contract underneath (sealed outcomes, one play one entry, amounts locked to the pool, the honesty architecture whole), with each game wearing its own physicality and its own cultural register on top. This is the working catalog — what each game is, how it feels in the hand, and which campaigns it serves best — so an organizer can match instrument to occasion instead of defaulting to whatever ran last year.
The flagship: The Wheels
The platform's centerpiece and the format most campaigns anchor on: three tiers (The 300, The 500, The 800), every number one slot, the landed number the gift, eighteen gold ✦$18 slots riding on the platform's own account. The wheel is the general-purpose participation engine — the community drive, the school campaign, the annual push — with the sell-out structure giving every campaign a visible finish line. The complete treatment lives in the wheel guide; in catalog terms: choose the wheel when breadth is the goal and the campaign wants a countdown.
The physical-play family
Gelt Drop — the sealed plinko
A coin tumbles down a pegged board in real physics — and the play's commit hash is on screen before the coin moves, the catalog's most visible proof of the sealed-outcome architecture: the result already exists; the tumble is choreography you can verify. Gelt Drop is the demonstrative game — the one to show the skeptic, the one whose fairness explains itself — and its Chanukah-native imagery makes it the season's natural anchor. Choose it for campaigns that want the wow and communities that ask sharp questions.
Pushke Scratch — the thumb's classic
A gold chocolate-gelt coin, embossed menorah, scratched with the thumb to reveal the gift beneath — the scratch-card's universal muscle memory, rendered warm instead of seedy. The scratch is the catalog's most intuitive mechanic (zero explanation, any age) and its quickest session, which suits broad shallow campaigns — the participation drive where three hundred people each spend forty seconds. Evergreen with a Chanukah affinity.
Yachatz — the press and snap
A hand matzah fills the frame; press and hold, it bows under the thumb, and the break decides. The catalog's most tactile moment and its most seasonal register — Pesach-season campaigns own it — with a one-more-play pull that the one-entry architecture keeps honest. Choose it when the campaign wants the season's texture in the giving itself.
The choice-and-reveal family
The Auction Table — lift and weigh
Six wrapped auction baskets on a velvet table; lift each, feel the weight, commit to a pick. The digital rendering of the community's beloved Chinese-auction moment — deliberation as the pleasure — and the natural companion to full online-auction campaigns. Choose it for audiences who love the auction culture and campaigns with prize partners.
The Esrog Box — the anti-slot
A dim lamp, a row of boxes, one deliberate choice — built to feel like picking an esrog: slow, considered, premium. The catalog's stated counter-statement to slot-machine pacing, and its premium-tier register suits higher-amount pools and Tishrei-season drives. Choose it when the campaign's crowd skews contemplative and the amounts deserve gravity.
Shalach Manos Mystery — the wrapped pick
Mishloach manos packages, ribboned and opaque; one pick, one reveal, the gift sealed before a ribbon was touched. Purim's game, naturally — the Purim campaign's participation layer — and the catalog's most gift-shaped framing, which suits family-audience drives year-round.
Dreidel Drey — the flick
One-thumb portrait flick, the swipe's velocity carried into real dreidel physics on a wooden board, the settled letter deciding. The most culturally beloved object in the catalog and the mechanic children ask to do again — the family-campaign and Chanukah-drive natural, run year-round per the platform's no-calendar-gates design.
One engine, many skins: the seal, the single entry, and the locked pool never change — what changes is which moment of the community's own culture the play lives inside.
Matching game to campaign
The working selection grid: for the annual community drive — the Wheels (the countdown structure carries multi-week campaigns). For the skeptical-board community — Gelt Drop first (the visible seal converts diligence into enthusiasm). For maximum-breadth participation pushes — Pushke Scratch (fastest session, zero learning curve). For seasonal texture — the calendar's own games (Dreidel and Gelt Drop toward Chanukah, Shalach Manos at Purim, Yachatz in Nissan, Esrog Box in Tishrei), each playable year-round but strongest in season. For auction-culture communities — the Auction Table, especially alongside real prize inventories. And for the combined campaign — the wheel as anchor with a seasonal skin as the second-week energy move, both riding one pool and one ledger. The try pages let an organizer's committee play every game free before choosing, which is the catalog's actual best feature: the decision is a group text and five minutes, not a meeting.
Do new games get added to the catalog?
The architecture is built for it — a new game is a new skin registering onto the same engine contract, inheriting the seal, the single entry, and the pool mechanics wholesale. The catalog grows the way the community's own game culture does: one beloved object at a time.
Frequently asked questions
Can one campaign run multiple games at once?
Yes — games are skins over the same pool architecture, so a campaign can anchor on the wheel and add a seasonal game as a second surface, one total throughout. The craft point is sequencing (introduce the second game at the momentum lull) rather than simultaneity for its own sake.
Do the games differ in average gift size?
The pool's range sets the amounts, not the skin — an $800-tier pool lands the same distribution through any game. What differs by game is session texture and audience fit, which move participation; the money mechanics are deliberately identical underneath.
Which game should a children's-audience campaign use?
Dreidel Drey and Pushke Scratch lead for families — intuitive, warm, fast — with the parents holding the actual giving per every campaign's ordinary structure. The games' registers were built family-safe throughout; the choice is texture, not appropriateness.
Where did the ten's design rules come from?
From the platform's own published spec: the engine contract (sealed outcomes, single entries, locked pools, the free entry path) governs every skin, and each game's file opens by citing it. The rules aren't marketing — they're the build's actual architecture, which is why the honesty page can describe them so specifically.